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Elliot Polsky [7]Elliot T. Polsky [1]
  1. Why Are Accidents Included under Being per se?Elliot Polsky - forthcoming - Nova et Vetera.
    In In V Metaphysics, lec. 9, Aquinas distinguishes between “being by accident” (ens per accidens) and “being by itself” (ens per se) and includes the nine accidental categories under the latter. But isn’t substance a being per se while accidents are, by definition, accidental beings? Several authors—including Ralph McInerny, Paul Symington, and Greg Doolan—have offered explanations of this strange classification. Drawing on an overlooked parallel text in the Posterior Analytics commentary and on Aquinas’s critique of Avicenna’s understanding of accidental denominatives, (...)
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  2. The Semantics of Divine Esse in Boethius.Elliot Polsky - forthcoming - Nova et Vetera.
    Boethius identifies God both with esse ipsum and esse suum. This paper explains Boethius's general semantic use of "esse" and the application of this use to God. It questions the helpfulness of attributing to Boethius "existence" words and argues for a more robust role in Boethius’s thought for Hilary of Poitiers’s and Augustine’s exegeses of Exodus 3:14-15 than has been acknowledged in recent scholarship.
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  3. Secunda Operatio Respicit Ipsum Esse Rei: An Evaluation of Jacques Maritain, Étienne Gilson, and Ralph McInerny on the Relation of Esse to the Intellect’s Two Operations.Elliot Polsky - 2021 - Nova et Vetera 19 (2):895–932.
    In a few texts, Thomas Aquinas says that the first operation of the intellect pertains to (respicit) “the quiddity of a thing” whereas the second operation pertains to “the to be itself of a thing” (esse). But Aquinas also says that quiddities are to the intellect as color is to the power of sight. Statements such as these seem to have led Jacques Maritain and Étienne Gilson to see esse as the proper object of the intellect’s second operation. Against this (...)
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  4. “In as Many Ways as Something is Predicated ... in that Many Ways is Something Signified to Be”: The Logic Behind Thomas Aquinas’s Predication Thesis, Esse Substantiale, and Esse in Rerum Natura.Elliot Polsky - 2019 - Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 93:263-292.
    Thomistic commentators agree that Thomas Aquinas at least nominally allows for 'to be' (esse) to signify not only an act contrasted with essence in creatures, but also the essence itself of those creatures. Nevertheless, it is almost unheard of for any author to interpret Thomas's use of the word 'esse' as referring to essence. Against this tendency, this paper argues that Thomas's In V Metaphysics argument that every predication signifies esse provides an important instance of Thomas using esse to signify (...)
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  5. The Real Distinction between Supposit and Nature in Angels in Thomas Aquinas.Elliot Polsky - forthcoming - Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association.
    It is universally acknowledged that, for St. Thomas, there is a distinction between human persons or supposits and their natures or essences. But it is usually thought that there is no parallel distinction between the angelic person or supposit and its nature. Yet, as this paper argues, Aquinas consistently puts forward just such a distinction. This paper surveys Aquinas’s arguments for the unique identity of God with his essence and the corresponding distinctions between created persons and their essences, showing in (...)
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  6. The Modern Semantic Principles Behind Gilson’s Existential Interpretation of Aquinas (Part 2).Elliot Polsky - forthcoming - Studia Gilsoniana.
    Part one of this two-part paper looked at the modern semantic developments underlying Gilson’s innovative and highly influential semantic theory in Being and Some Philosophers (BSP)—the existential neutrality of the copula, the distinction between predication and some positing or “thetic” function of judgment, and the distinction between predication and assertion. The present part of this paper offers a rereading of Gilson’s work in light of this modern backdrop. It argues that Gilson’s BSP, rather than being a purely historical exegesis of (...)
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  7. The Modern Semantic Principles Behind Gilson’s Existential Interpretation of Aquinas (Part 1).Elliot T. Polsky - 2024 - Studia Gilsoniana 13 (2):303–337.
    Gilson’s Being and Some Philosophers (BSP) has been widely influential well beyond Thomistic circles, but its modern historical sources and logical consequences call for further investigation. The first part of this two-part article explores three modern semantic assumptions or principles without which BSP’s innovative theory of existential judgment cannot be fully appreciated—the existential neutrality of the copula ubiquitous among modern logicians; Kant’s introduction of a positing or “thetic” function of judgment, the understanding of which evolved in nineteenth-century logic; and the (...)
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  8. Thomas Aquinas on Grace as a Mysterious Kind of Creature.Elliot Polsky - 2021 - Studia Gilsoniana 10 (3):545–578.
    Although the question of whether, in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, sanctifying grace is “created” or “uncreated” has received considerable attention in the last several decades, many of the questions and arguments proposed by those, such as Karl Rahner, Jerome Ebacher, and A.N. Williams, in favor of grace being uncreated have gone unanswered. Among these ancillary questions and arguments are those concerning the proper subject of grace, the categorial classification of grace, and the reason for the mystery and unconsciousness of (...)
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